The Deep State: The Unelected Shadow Government Is Here to Stay

America’s next president will inherit more than a bitterly divided
nation teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe when he or she
assumes office. He will also inherit a shadow government, one that is
fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in
essence, running the country.To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.The first
shadow government, referred to as COG or continuity of government, is
made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the
government in the event of a “catastrophe.”The second
shadow government, referred to as the Deep State, is comprised of
unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors,
paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots
behind the scenes right now.The first shadow government, COG, is a phantom menace waiting for the
right circumstances—a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic
meltdown—to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now.
When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial
law.Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People,
it is the second shadow government, the Deep State, which poses the
greater threat to our freedoms. This permanent, corporatized,
militarized, entrenched bureaucracy is unaffected by elections,
unaltered by populist movements, and beyond the reach of the law.This is the hidden face of the police state.These two shadow governments, which make a mockery of representative
government and the “reassurance ritual” of voting, have been a long time
in the making. Yet they have been so shrouded in secrecy, well hidden
from the eyes and ears of the American people, that they exist and
function in contravention to the principles of democratic government.As the following makes clear, these shadow governments, which operate
beyond the reach of the Constitution and with no real accountability to
the citizenry, are the reason why “we the people” have no control over
our government.The COG shadow government plan was devised during the Cold War as a means of ensuring that a nuclear strike didn’t paralyze the federal government.COG initially called for three teams
consisting of a cabinet member, an executive chief of staff and
military and intelligence officials to practice evacuating and directing
a counter nuclear strike against the Soviet Union from a variety of
high-tech, mobile command vehicles. If the president and vice president
were both killed, one of these teams would take control, with the
ranking cabinet official serving as president.This all changed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when it
became clear that there would be no warning against a terrorist attack.
Instead of waiting until an attack occurred to mobilize part-time
bureaucrats and activate evacuation schemes, George W. Bush opted to change COG and establish a full-time, permanent shadow government, stationed outside the capital, run by permanently appointed (not elected) executive officials.COG has since taken on a power—and a budget—of its own.Incredibly, under the Obama administration, the plans for the shadow government have expanded and grown far more elaborate and costly than many realize. It is what investigative journalist William M. Arkin refers to as “the latest manifestation of an obsession with government survival.”In much the same way that the nation was taken hostage after 9/11 by
color-coded terror alerts and “See Something, Say Something” campaigns
that transformed us into a fearful, watchful nation of suspects, the
government’s efforts to prepare us for a so-called national disaster
have, in turn, left us a constant state of near-emergency and acclimated
us to the sight of militarized police, military drills on American
soil, privatized prisons, the specter of internment camps, and the
erosion of constitutional rights, especially as they pertain to
so-called “extremists,” domestic or otherwise.Study the COG plans carefully, however, and you’ll find that the concern isn’t so much about protecting our government as it is about protecting the nation’s governmental elite.As Arkin reports: “Countless billions have been spent on this endeavor over the years, a
secret orgy of preparedness going on behind the scenes, one that
ensures Washington can defend itself, take care of its own, and survive
no matter what.”To this end, the government has invested heavily in the “architecture of fear”:
massive underground bunkers—the size of small cities—which are
sprinkled throughout the country for the government elite to escape to
“in case of an imminent nuclear strike so that they can set up a kind of
Administration-in-exile, directing every order of business from retaliation to recovery.”These bunkers, strategically located around the nation’s capital and in key states, represent a who’s
who on the shadow government’s payroll, with every department and
agency represented, from the Department of Education and the Trademark
Office to the Small Business Administration and the National Archives.No sector has been overlooked:
military, surveillance, counterintelligence, scientific, political,
judicial, corporate contractors, as well as computer programmers,
engineers, fire fighters, craftsmen, security guards, branch chiefs,
financial managers, supply officers, secretaries and stenographers, all
of whom have been entrusted with special ID cards allowing them
clearance into the doomsday survival sites. They’ve even included individuals tasked with patent and trademark processing. They even have contingency plans to save priceless works of art.The Federal Relocation Arc near Washington DC will reportedly serve
as the emergency bunker for “every Cabinet department (and every
government organization deemed essential).” Site R, a 700,000-foot
facility inside Raven Rock Mountain near Camp David, will serve as a
backup Pentagon. Peters Mountain near Charlottesville, Va., is the likely site for the nation’s domestic spies to hide out. Congress will retire to a subterranean facility near the posh Greenbrier resort
in West Virginia, which served as an internment facility for Japanese,
Italian and German diplomats during World War II. And a
600,000-square-foot complex inside Virginia’s Mount Weather is expected
to be the primary relocation site for the White House, the Supreme Court
and much of the executive branch.Built into the side of a mountain, Mount Weather, near Bluemont, Va., is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This self-contained facility contains, among other things,
a hospital, crematorium, dining and recreation areas, sleeping
quarters, reservoirs of drinking and cooling water, an emergency power
plant, a radio/television studio and a full-time police and fire department.There is also an Office of the Presidency at Mount Weather, which
regularly receives top-secret national security information from all the
federal departments and agencies. This facility was largely unknown to
everyone, including Congress, until it came to light in the mid-1970s.
Military personnel connected to the bunker have refused to reveal any
information about it, even before congressional committees. In fact,
Congress has no oversight, budgetary or otherwise, on Mount Weather, and
the specifics of the facility remain top-secret.These facilities reinforce a troubling government mindset that treats the American people as relatively insignificant and expendable. Because you know who’s not
on the list of
key-individuals-to-be-saved-in-the-eventuality-of-a-disaster? You and me
and every other American citizen who is viewed as a mere economic unit
to be tallied, bought and sold by those in power.Not to worry, however. The government hasn’t completely forgotten about us.In the event of a “national emergency”—loosely defined
as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary
levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the
U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government
functions”—the executive branch and its unelected appointees will be
given unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power.In such an event, the Constitution will effectively be suspended, thereby ushering in martial law.However, writing for Radar magazine, Christopher Ketcham suggests that the government won’t have completely forgotten about the rest of us. In fact, Ketcham
believes that the government also has plans to imprison hundreds of
thousands of “potentially suspect” Americans in detention camps.Ketcham describes a program created by the Department of Homeland
Security that relies on a database of Americans who might be considered
potential threats in the event of a national emergency. Referred to by
the code name Main Core,
this database reportedly contains the names of millions of Americans
who, “often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered
unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The
database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost
instantaneously.”Sounds unnervingly like the objectives of the government’s new
Domestic Terrorism Czar and the Strong Cities network, which will be
working to identify and target potential extremists, doesn’t it?Under Ketcham's scenario,
if a terrorist attack occurs, the president will declare a national
emergency, activating COG procedures and throwing the country into
martial law with the shadow government at the helm. The administration
will then round up the “dangerous” Americans listed in Main Core and
place them in one of the many internment camps or private prisons built
for just such an eventuality.For all intents and purposes, the nation is one national “emergency”
away from having a full-fledged, unelected, authoritarian state emerge
from the shadows. All it will take is the right event—another terrorist
attack, perhaps, or a natural disaster—for such a regime to emerge from
the shadows.As unnerving as that prospect may be, however, it is the second
shadow government, what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers
to as “the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” that poses the greater threat right now.Consider this: how is it that partisan gridlock has seemingly jammed
up the gears (and funding sources) in Washington, yet the government has
been unhindered in its ability to wage endless wars abroad, in the
process turning America into a battlefield and its citizens into enemy
combatants?The credit for such relentless, entrenched, profit-driven governance, according to Lofgren, goes to “another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue,
a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country
according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but
only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we
choose.”This “state within a state”
hides “mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light
of day,” says Lofgren, and yet the “Deep State does not consist of the
entire government.”Rather, Lofgren continues:

It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies:
the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of
Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice
Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its
jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international
sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street.All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the
President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the
judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of
Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts,
such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of
Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are
conducted.The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among
the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a
kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and
some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence
committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is
mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required
usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State’s emissaries.

In an expose titled “Top Secret America,” The Washington Post revealed
the private side of this shadow government, made up of 854,000 contract
personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of
top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.”Reporting on the Post’s findings, Lofgren points out:

These contractors now set the political and social tone of
Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the
country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register, and are rarely subject to congressional hearings…

The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street
(“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent
and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.As Lofgren concludes:

Remember this the next time you find yourselves mesmerized by the
antics of the 2016 presidential candidates or drawn into a politicized
debate over the machinations of Congress, the president or the
judiciary: it’s all intended to distract you from the fact that you have
no authority and no rights in the face of the shadow governments.